Mary Jane's Story

Eric Wikman's First Article on Marijuana, 1995 Prohibition and Marijuana: History Does Repeat Marijuana prohibition has been in effect since 1937, with trends that closely resemble those of alcohol prohibition-meaning an increase in crime, distrust, and dissension. If the goal of marijuana prohibition is to stop Americans from using it, then it has failed, just like the other prohibition failed to make America a "dry" country. It is important to go back and look at the factors leading to marijuana prohibition-especially the stages of exaggeration, silence, and the imposition of severe penalties-before looking at the effects of prohibition during the last half-century. Let me first point out that I am not an advocate of marijuana, and will not argue that marijuana is harmless. Research shows that marijuana damages short term memory, distorts perceptions, impairs judgment and complex motor skills, alters heart rates, and has the potential to trigger severe anxiety, paranoia, and lethargy (Shalala, 1995, p.10). Yet I also feel its effects are in many ways less harmful than those of alcohol and tobacco-for instance, alcohol's potential to cause cirrhosis and tobacco's links to lung cancer and heart disease. Both are considered carcinogenic. In addition, alcohol is cited as a factor in half of this country's highway fatalities, half of all arrests made for any criminal charge-including homicides-and one-fourth of all suicides. In 1972 the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse estimated the social costs of America's alcohol habit to be $15 billion a year (p.15); it has steadily increased since then. Three-part attack on marijuana When comparing tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, there is strong evidence that marijuana has the least addictive power (Schlosser, 1994, p.41). However, this does not hide the fact that all three can have a strong impact on an individual. As with all drugs, they are capable of disrupting home life, affecting job performance, and causing withdrawal from society. In my opinion, all drugs share this power on equal terms because of the emotional problems of the people who use them; no single drug has more potential for harm than any other in terms of social impacts. While hemp has been grown in America since 1611 (Grinspoon, 1971, p.11), the practice of smoking marijuana did not become widespread until the 1920's-a period of strong drug intolerance during the "great social experiment" of alcohol prohibition. Marijuana use was highest among people who also used opiates, primarily recent immigrants. In the 1930's, the common belief that immigrants were inhumane and violent included a strong belief that marijuana was part of the cause. Since it was associated with opiates, marijuana was quickly defined as a narcotic (Musto, 1991, p.45), and by 1931 all but two states had passed anti-marijuana legislation. The final two did so by 1937, the same year the federal government created the Marijuana Tax Act (National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse 1972, p.14)-for which no tax stamps were ever issued. Not once during this period of prohibitive legislation was any research conducted on marijuana and it's effects, nevertheless it was almost universally assumed that marijuana was a narcotic, caused psychological dependence, provoked violent crime, and led to insanity (ibid.) The first of three strategies used to fight marijuana was silence. It was believed that if youth didn't hear about marijuana, they wouldn't become curious and experiment with it. Therefore, in the 1930's discussion about marijuana was forbidden in all public schools, and from 1934 to 1956 the Motion Picture Association of America banned all films showing the use of narcotics (Musto, 1991, p.46). The strategy did not work as well as hoped, so anti-marijuana groups adopted the next strategy: exaggeration. The goal was to scare potential marijuana users. Even such respected periodicals as the American Journal of Medicine went along with this strategy, publishing such warnings as: "Marijuana users will suddenly turn with murderous violence upon whoever is nearest to them. They will run amuck with a knife, axe, gun, or anything else that is close at hand, and will kill or maim without reason" (ibid., p.44). F.T. Merrill of the Opium Research Committee wrote: "While numerous crimes [have been] traced to its abuse, its peculiar virulent effect, leading sometimes to insanity, makes its use dangerous to the individuals and to society in general . . . [it] leads to uncontrollable irritability and violent rages, which in most forms cause assault and murder" (Grinspoon, 1971, p.17). During my research I found a medical handbook written in 1970 that continued to report these myths as fact, going so far as to imply that the words "hashish" and "assassin"--which do have a common root in terms of word history--have a cause and effect relationship. In the same manual the word "amuck" was associated to a characteristic of the drug; according to its author, the word, which means "to kill," "was the word the natives of Malay would shriek as they dashed down the street, maddened by hashish, in a murderous frenzy" (Williams, 1970, p.140). From the official California police officers' guide of the same period came this warning: "Marijuana is the immediate and direct cause of the crime committed . . . the user is very often dangerous to handle or control, has no fear, feels no pain, and may commit crimes of violence. . . . He may suddenly get the idea that his best friends or his own immediate family are about to take his life and proceed to kill them . . . in fact, no act is too fantastic or horrible to the user of marijuana" (ibid., p.141) Penalties for marijuana use fluctuated with popular belief regarding its level of danger. If people believed the effects were particularly bad, the penalties were stiff, but during some decades public attitudes were more lenient, therefore penalties were reduced. Drug use declined, fear increased, and so did penalties throughout the 1950s. One of the first federal mandatory prison sentences was established at that time: 10 years minimum for marijuana possession, and a mandatory death sentence for selling marijuana to a minor (Musto, 1991, p.46). During the 1960s and 70s, penalties declined as use increased, with eleven states decriminalizing possession for personal use (Thies and Register, 1993, p.389). Then, in the 1980s, drug use declined and penalties rose. The "three strike" program was established, under which a mandatory life sentence without parole must be given for third-time offenders. Judges no longer have the power to use their own discretion in sentencing, but are required to base their punishment on the "most serious readily provable charge" (Schlosser, 1994, p.93)-including a mandatory death sentence for anyone found guilty of managing a major marijuana plantation of 60,000 plants (ibid., p.89). It appears that the current attitude toward marijuana prohibition is based on the belief that relaxed policies lead to greater use. Statistics argue otherwise: nationwide, marijuana use in 1984 was measured at 26.3%, and in the eleven states that decriminalized marijuana, it was 27.3%. In 1988 the percentages were 15.4 and 16.1, respectively. In those eleven states, decriminalization meant that individuals were no longer arrested for simple possession. In ten of those states there is a $0-100 fine for possession-the result of a threat by the federal government to withhold highway money for states that did not have minimum punishment standards (Thies and Register, 1993, p.387). Going outside the country for another example of how legalization does not lead to greater use, Holland has witnessed a 40% decrease in marijuana use since the Dutch government legalized it in 1976 (Schlosser, 1994, p.94). During the same time period, marijuana use has decreased in the United States, so it cannot be definitively argued that either stronger penalties or decriminalization is better at affecting the number of people who use marijuana. It seems clear that social policy, and not legal policy, had the greater effect in Holland.

Hemp Data Base

Site Map